Latest / Conservation Stories / Dry Side Dispatch • September 25th • W. Calloway Huffaker

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Dry Side Dispatch • September 25th • W. Calloway Huffaker · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Called the Story the Bones Tell. It's a new book written about the Lubbock Lake landmark site. And so you've already read it? Well, it came out like three days ago. Of course I read it.
• 0:10
  Speaker B: I mean, oh, my goodness.
• 0:12
  Speaker A: But they were talking about some of the research, some of the stuff they've done at Tohoka and the puff faker name came up like, hey, yeah, we,
• 0:19
  Speaker C: we're ranching on the Tahoka Lake ranch right now. And it's got the lot of, you know, history and things all the way back to prehistoric. I believe that the mammoths.
• 0:33
  Speaker A: I believe the landmark has actually done some excavation. Archaeology.
• 0:36
  Speaker C: A lot. A lot. Yeah. The lady that owns it just passed away, but she's very involved. Yes, she was with the museum and that kind of thing.
• 0:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. And she was very. They actually, she was actually quoted in the book. So apparently the book was written prior to her passing.
• 0:55
  Speaker C: Clyde May.
• 0:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Speaker C: Yep, yep. Super lady.
• 0:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, she was very, you know, she was very passionate about making sure that, you know, people got to enjoy what was out there and see the prairie and know what was going on out there.
• 1:09
  Speaker C: Yep. She's going to continue it too.
• 1:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:11
  Speaker B: So what's happening out there? Well, I don't even know about this.
• 1:14
  Speaker C: She passed away and. But prior to her passing, she had Tohoka Lake landmark and she invited people out, naturalists, archaeologists, just anybody that was interested.
• 1:30
  Speaker B: Oh, wow.
• 1:32
  Speaker C: Seeing West Texas and it's got really neat, neat things going on with it. It's got where they found a lot of mastodon bones and things like that tusk. There's an old sheep herders dugout that really. One of the first sheep dips that I know of in West Texas is on this place and it's still there. It's got 1896 written in the concrete, I think is what.
• 2:06
  Speaker A: It's pretty. It's pretty cool. I mean that what's out there, you know, I think, you know, that's. That, you know, that's the area where the Tokaidaisi.
• 2:15
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 2:16
  Speaker A: You know, and you don't see that much anymore because it requires a little bit more established prairie.
• 2:21
  Speaker B: And so does it have some original prairie? Like is it like, was it ever broke out?
• 2:27
  Speaker C: No, it's never been broke out. It's in one of these salt lakes and just ranch country. Just ranch country breaks and things like that.
• 2:39
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 2:39
  Speaker C: The like. My dad tells me they've water skied on it when he was a kid.
• 2:45
  Speaker B: Hey, now, I wouldn't be surprised because we have a cousin.
• 2:48
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 2:49
  Speaker B: That had a lake out in that area. And we ski. We skied on it.
• 2:53
  Speaker A: That was Stacy Timmons west of o'. Donnell. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:57
  Speaker A: As far as I know, it's dry now. I bet it is almost dry.
• 3:00
  Speaker B: But he had ads on tv. He teach lessons and stuff out there.
• 3:05
  Speaker C: So they. That had enough rain in that lake, West O' Donnell, within the last 10 years or so that they were skiing on it and had us. Had a ski club. Yeah.
• 3:18
  Speaker A: That's amazing. It's, you know, it's kind of. It's so weird how this country is that you get like, you know, they got more enough rainfall to do that and, you know, I haven't gotten enough rainfall to get, you know, to get wheat to sprout and know. But thank God for today. It's wonderful.
• 3:35
  Speaker C: Hopefully.
• 3:35
  Speaker A: Hallelujah. Keep on coming. I feel sorry for the people in Baja that are fixing to get slammed by Hurricane Polo, but bring it on. By the time it gets up here, ain't nothing but water, you bet. And they're talking about. I think they're talking about Kansas and northern parts of Oklahoma getting like 7 or 8 inches out of that thing next week. And, you know, I'll settle for the, you know, two and a half to four they're calling for down here.
• 3:59
  Speaker C: Let's keep it. Keep it coming. We need it bad.
• 4:03
  Speaker A: You bet. This country is. This country is never more than a week away from a drought, you know,
• 4:07
  Speaker C: But I didn't know that we weren't in drought constantly.
• 4:11
  Speaker A: Well, it was kind of funny. Tiller and I were just talking and we used. I used to have a satellite app on my phone that I track my rainfall with. Well, I also have a rain gauge. And so I've got the pin for my app set at my barn. And my rain gauge is 20 yards from the back door of my barn. And so every time I get a rain, I go down there and I go out and check my rain gauge and I write it on a whiteboard. I added it all up. I got about 8 inches this year, but according to the app, I've got 17 inches and I'm right sitting right at average. I'm not going. I'm not sure where that other 8 inches or so went, but I sure would like to have it right now.
• 4:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, I still rely on the old line of gar rain gauge myself.
• 4:48
  Speaker B: Yep, yep.
• 4:51
  Speaker A: I tell somebody I bought it a new to me Toyota Tacoma in July. I guess it was in July. June, June or July, something like that. And I told somebody, they were like well, have you got any rains like. No, I said I want to rain really bad just so I can see if the four wheel drive works in my truck. Don't care. Just like.
• 5:11
  Speaker B: I just need to see it.
• 5:12
  Speaker A: Just need to see it.
• 5:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, Cal, give everybody a little bit of background about, about you and what you do and.
• 5:20
  Speaker C: Well, my name's Callaway Huffaker and if you're from around Tahoka, everybody calls me Cal. And my granddad started practicing there in the 30s. I'm the third generation practicing lawyer. Always tell everybody I practice law to cover my farming and ranching habits. And here lately that's been so true. But I've been practicing law down there since 88. I tell everybody it's country law practice, which defining that's kind of difficult, but it's a very general practice. I represent mostly farmers and ranchers doing ag related and land related issues and that seems to be my general practice right now. Our firm's got five attorneys in it and you know, for little downtown Tahoka, Texas, it's kind of amazing but we've got a full fledged firm. We can handle just about everything. But my area is mostly representing landowners.
• 6:38
  Speaker B: Toca's kind of, kind of up and coming or something.
• 6:41
  Speaker C: Well, we're kind of right on the edge. You know, New Home is in the northern part of Linn county and New Home is going through a big growth spurt in the last five or 10 years and it's starting to spill over into Tahoka now. And so we're excited that we're seeing some growth. It's going to require some changes in our community because we don't have residential lots, we don't have a lot of the things that we need to continue that growth. So we're kind of in the process of developing those things right now.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: Interesting. Well, I know that I think it's maybe your mayor, someone I've noticed has put some really good stuff up on, on Facebook about like how, how to get their water and you know, different things like that. And I've been real impressed about just getting that kind of information out there. Then I saw yesterday that there's a couple that have bought a historic building down there and they're going to redo it.
• 7:42
  Speaker C: From what I hear, a barbecue.
• 7:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. Event center and restaurant and. Yeah, all kinds of stuff.
• 7:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really neat old building. It was originally a grocery store and then auto parts store and it's been abandoned for quite a few years. It's about a stone Throw from my front door of my office. So I'm excited, too.
• 8:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's great.
• 8:04
  Speaker C: Just closed on that couple weeks ago.
• 8:06
  Speaker B: That's awesome.
• 8:07
  Speaker A: That's fantastic. I have to put it on my list. I went to the. They opened a new coffee shop in Abernathy, and my wife and I like to go to small family. You know, we'd like to do local coffee shops. And, you know, I don't go to. To the evil place. And so.
• 8:23
  Speaker C: Well, we're, you know, we.
• 8:24
  Speaker A: But they.
• 8:25
  Speaker C: Tahoka is right on the edge of. Of being too far and too close. Yes. But, you know, know, last 20 years or so, we've become more and more of a bedroom community for Lubbock and surprisingly enough, Midland, Odessa, we've got a lot of people that live there that have spouse working in Lubbock and a spouse working in Midland, Odessa, and they're driving two different directions. And so it's.
• 8:56
  Speaker B: But, you know, you are like in an. In an interesting location, too, to like, so many people that live out in that new home area that, like, it's 20 minutes to a grocery store.
• 9:09
  Speaker C: Well, I don't know,
• 9:14
  Speaker A: but that's like, you know, you're looking at Seminole. How and what has happened to Seminole? I always tell people I said that, you know, Brownfield is both too close to Lubbock and too far away from love. It's too close for it to have a lot of stuff move in and really support a bunch of small business on an actively growing basis. There's more of them now than there was. I'm kind of pleased to see that. But I think Tahoka is probably in the same boat. You're in there where it's close enough you can just run to Lubbock. It's not like it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago, when we were growing up when you went to Lubbock and it was a big deal. Now it's just Tuesday.
• 9:50
  Speaker C: Well, you know, these rural communities surrounding Lubbock have been suffering in the last, you know, decades. And our local businesses are pretty well gone. And so we're becoming more and more of a residential type of community. And it's been a challenge to keep everything going with that kind of change. But we're seeing some really good things, good, positive things, good young people coming back to our community, which we haven't had for a while. And so I'm real positive.
• 10:23
  Speaker B: You know, one of the things, I think that people that. That could be attractive to our areas. You have places like, you know, you got People that are commuting an hour to work in, you know, 10 miles, 20 miles, something like that, you know, and my goodness, you could commute an hour. You know, like, if you commute an
• 10:43
  Speaker A: hour here, you're almost a Snyder.
• 10:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, right.
• 10:46
  Speaker C: You know, well, we've got. We've got attorneys in the office that live in Lubbock that drive back and forth every day and. And it takes them less time on their drive from South Lubbock to our office in Tohoka than it does from their house to the courthouse here in Lubbock. Yeah, I can believe it just because of traffic.
• 11:04
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:05
  Speaker B: So one of the things we talked about here several weeks ago, we have Nick Bergfield on, and we were talking about Lubbock and cities and urban things. And one of the things Dusty was, was saying was, you know, be interesting to see because we back up just a little bit. What we're discussing was what happens to commute, what happens to a neighborhood when they close the school. We're talking about love, but closing schools and how it is the end of that neighborhood. Like, it just. It does away with the value in that neighborhood. And so we were saying wouldn't be interesting if, if, you know, somebody put in a. A development and said, we're going to put in A K through 12 school here. So you could replicate that feel of a small town, you know, of like, my kids gonna be in the same school till they graduate. They're gonna know the same people, you know, and they're not gonna go to a high school that has, you know, 3,000 kids or whatever, you know, but you get that same. You'd get that same experience if you moved to somewhere like Toca.
• 12:06
  Speaker C: Well, you know, we're very proud of our schools. We've got four communities within Linn County. All four have their school districts, and that's rare. Now, there's been discussion of those being consolidated. And, you know, I think when you look at taking a school out of some of these small communities, you're plucking the heart out of them and it would really adversely affect them. But on the flip side, a small school has so many benefits that you don't get from a large school. I tell everybody all the time when I'm interviewing people to come to work in our office, first thing I ask them is, where did you go to school? And were you involved in any extracurricular activities? First of all, when you go to a small school, you're forced to. To be involved in extracurricular activities and not just One, you're not just in the band or play football or those kinds of things. You're involved in everything from one act play to sports. And then you're also involved in your church. You're also involved in 4H or FFA, those kinds of things. And those kids, when they come into our office to work, which we have five working right now in our office, those kids that come from that background versus an urban background outperform hands down. Those kids that they're competing with not because they've got a superior education, because they know how to handle a life circumstance such as me giving them five different things to do at once. And they can do it because that's what they've grown up doing, whereas these other kids are not able to do that. And I see that day in and day out.
• 14:07
  Speaker B: And it's so interesting because you think, you know, what do kids do in a small town? Well, if they're involved in school, that's what they do. They're constantly doing things. And, you know, benefit too is like you can't do anything without somebody knowing about it. Your parents couldn't know about it for, you know. And so there's just such a. That's a village mindset of raising kids. And I think that is definitely a plus. And one of the we were talking about with Nick was the how to calculate benefits of projects that are not always economics. Because when we look at when we consolidate these schools, because it's more efficient. And is efficiency actually the best choice to make? We seem to think it is all the time, you know, because it maximizes our money, you know, or where our money goes. But at the same time, there's you. You let go of some things that can't be replaced.
• 15:05
  Speaker C: Well, you know, our funding for our public benefit be county, school, hospital, you know, whatever it may be in our small communities is always a challenge. I am a believer and I preach that you get what you pay for. And I think that we've got to understand that those benefits come with a cost, as does everything in our life. And we have to recognize that, especially when we're talking about taxes. I mean, it's difficult in small towns. I agree. I pay a lot of taxes and I don't like it, but I do see the benefit and I look at it in a different light.
• 15:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I was in Canadian recently and we were touring around the town with the new doctor that's there. And I was, I mean, an amazing community. What a community. You know, highest property taxes in Texas. One, highest property Rate Texas. And I was like, oh, no wonder they have this beautiful new, I mean like where their seniors go and Alzheimer's union units and ex, you know, assisted living in, you know, full on nursing homes and then the school is, you know, is there and looks great. And I was just, yes, it's cool
• 16:34
  Speaker A: when you get, you know, if you're, you know, that's the best thing about if you're going to pay high taxes. Being able to see something with it.
• 16:41
  Speaker C: Sure.
• 16:41
  Speaker A: You know, see, see that you're getting bang for your buck off of right off of something. And that's just, you know, you go to other places, they've got relatively high taxes. You're not going, what are you doing with my money? You know, where is, you got something like that? They've got a plan, they've got a, you know, they got a goal in mind and how they're going to make it look. And when you go through there and you do that and hey, it's, you know, it's, you're getting what you're paying for then you know, I know there's, you know, a lot of other things. You're like going, I'm paying a lot of taxes and I am not seeing anything here. You know,
• 17:14
  Speaker C: well, I think we're all guilty of being complainers. Oh my goodness. You know, until you serve on those boards or those commissions or those councils, whatever and look at what's actually happening, it's easy to complain. I can't tell you how many times I've represented or been involved in those situations where when you finally sit down and talk to somebody about how much it actually costs to get those things done and that you're having to watch those pennies and they don't all get done the way you think they should if you're an outsider. But when you're looking at it from the inside and you're trying to be cognizant of the money that you're spending that's on behalf of the citizens. It's, it's a completely different deal.
• 18:08
  Speaker A: We had we one, one week we went through the county budget and looked at the county budget and just see where county went next to. It was very interesting to see where we sat as far as their tax rate from the count from a county standpoint, which is really actually very good, very low. And then you know, you're like, well, you know, then there's like, you know, three or four things. You're like going, well, but they're spending the money. Actually the only thing that stuck out. That was kind of bizarre. Is the highest paid person in Lovett County. They won't tell you who it is. They tell you it makes $180,000 a year, but they won't tell you who it is.
• 18:41
  Speaker B: You don't know who it is. Yeah.
• 18:42
  Speaker A: And so. But, you know, it's interesting to see, you know, from that and comparing it to rounds like Laredo is one that Lubbock is compared to quite a bit. And then, you know, look at Amarillo, which is just up north. And I. The difference in tax rate between Lubbock and Amarillo was. Was surprising. I mean, it was substantially higher in Amarillo. And then, of course, you've got Midland down there that's got, like, the lowest tax rate in the state. But, I mean, not everybody's sitting on a pot of gold, you know.
• 19:07
  Speaker B: But, like, the other thing we were talking about is, like, so the city of Lubbock, So we have 350,000 people in the county, and we have eight employees for our Parks and Recreation Department. Eight. And I was. I was leaving Amarillo the other day where they're building. I passed three new parks as I was going through Emeril. I was like, yeah, we couldn't do this. Like, this is why we don't have parks, because we don't have. We don't have the people to maintain them.
• 19:36
  Speaker A: Right?
• 19:37
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 19:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:38
  Speaker B: So. But I saw someone the other day, was eating out, and I saw someone wearing a city of Lubbock parks department, and I was like, thank you. He was, like, looking at me like, I know there's only eight of you.
• 19:54
  Speaker C: Well, I was raised in a household that taught me to keep my mouth shut and not complain unless I had a solution, had a reason that I was involved in and knew all the facts and had a solution.
• 20:09
  Speaker B: Such a good. Such a good point. That is so true. We have a cousin that was the city manager for a very small town outside of Austin that went from, you know, 0 to 100. And he used to say, cave. Cave. People. Citizens against. Virtually everything. And I'm like that. And I do think it is just a habit to complain about what's happening.
• 20:38
  Speaker C: Well, you know, we represent a lot of small towns, and I've served on boards my whole, whole career. The worst thing that really gets under my goat is people that complain just because they're wanting to complain. They don't have any suggestions or any resolution. It just, you know, get involved. I don't. You know, I'll. I'll applaud you when you have a complaint, but come to us with a solution.
• 21:11
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:12
  Speaker C: You know, our suggestion.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: Well, and there are so many. There's really so many boards and so many opportunities to serve. I didn't, I just, I had no clue how many things there are that you can do to be involved, to help maybe, you know, make some and effect some changes or at least get in there and you realize why things are the way they are.
• 21:35
  Speaker C: Sure. You know, and you know, what we're seeing in our rural communities, which is think bad. It's part and parcel of what we're seeing in our government as a whole. People don't want to take criticism and they don't want to be in that. In that position of being in the line of fire, so to speak. And you know, we need good people to step up. Young people. Yes, young people to be involved and get in the school boards and in the city councils and those kinds of things. And it's their turn, they need to step up. And I'm not seeing that. And a lot of it's because of the political atmosphere. A lot of it's on our phone. You know, people will say things about another person they would never say in front of them.
• 22:32
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 22:33
  Speaker A: The joke about the reason people are like that on people are getting less people is because they're not afraid of getting punched in the face anymore.
• 22:42
  Speaker C: That's right. Exactly right. Well, my wife's got to where she won't go with me anywhere. I mean, she won't go to the post office or the drug store out to eat because somebody's always having to make a comment to me.
• 22:57
  Speaker B: So what boards do you serve on?
• 22:59
  Speaker C: Well, I just retired from Lynn County Hospital District. I was on that board for almost 30 years.
• 23:08
  Speaker B: Our youngest brothers just got on the Terry County Hospital board.
• 23:12
  Speaker C: So I just stepped down from it. I was on the housing authority for 20 something years. I've been city attorney for. In Tahoka for my entire career. So almost 40. We represent other little small towns. I've been on things like that. Lay leader at our church.
• 23:37
  Speaker B: So, you know, weren't you on the historical commission Society? I mean, Texas something.
• 23:42
  Speaker C: I was on the. On a national statewide board that oversaw funding that was started during the Depression, which Ropesville was one of the communities that, that started from that funding project. And it's still going on. It's drawing a blank. Texas. I'll remember.
• 24:11
  Speaker B: You'll think of it in a minute.
• 24:13
  Speaker C: But anyway, there's still money there, still money there. And it's intended for loans in rural Communities to help in development of businesses mostly. Is it Texas Rural Communities?
• 24:30
  Speaker B: Texas Rural Communities, Yep.
• 24:33
  Speaker C: The home office is in Austin and they still have funds and the board is made up of people across the state, and that board makes decisions on what loans to make and, you know, things like that.
• 24:52
  Speaker B: That's interesting. And is it run through like a cog, Like a governance, like a.
• 25:01
  Speaker C: So it's overseen by. I don't know which division of the state. I want to say Secretary of State was the one that ended up with it. It was kind of tossed around.
• 25:15
  Speaker B: So is it a non profit? Because I'm looking here, there's one called Texas Communities.
• 25:19
  Speaker C: Rural Communities, Inc. Texas Rural Communities. Yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker B: It's a nonprofit organization.
• 25:26
  Speaker C: Yes. They're not for profit.
• 25:30
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 25:30
  Speaker C: Okay, let me see if I can find it. Yeah, but that's, that's the, It's a really neat program. Just because it's money left over from the New Deal.
• 25:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:41
  Speaker B: Amazing. Yeah.
• 25:44
  Speaker A: Is it, when is it like. It's, I guess it's just a line item in the federal budget that never been zero.
• 25:53
  Speaker C: It's still working off the same money that they were given back in the 30s. It's just, it's just revolving.
• 26:00
  Speaker B: 10 million in that assets.
• 26:02
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 26:03
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 26:06
  Speaker A: That's pretty wild.
• 26:07
  Speaker C: Yeah. So I served on it for a while and so on and off. Different, different boards and committees, so.
• 26:16
  Speaker B: Well, I, I. This is really interesting. Oh, and interesting too. That's Buddha Texas.
• 26:22
  Speaker C: Yep. That's the home office.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: Is where the home office is.
• 26:25
  Speaker B: Home of the cavemen.
• 26:26
  Speaker A: Yes, home of the cavemen. And women.
• 26:30
  Speaker B: And women.
• 26:30
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 26:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. Let's not be how interesting. Wow. This is really, really neat. I have to look into this. This is what surprises me is like how much stuff that like there is
• 26:40
  Speaker C: out there people don't know about.
• 26:42
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 26:43
  Speaker B: And I've been doing this for, I mean, like full time for three years, and I'm still finding things.
• 26:49
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 26:49
  Speaker B: It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And, and so much of it. I feel like we haven't really taken advantage of it, you know, in our area as much as we really could.
• 26:59
  Speaker C: So I was exposed to it through the TALL program and that's how I got involved.
• 27:05
  Speaker B: Really? We didn't do that in our, in my tall class. Interesting.
• 27:11
  Speaker C: So when we did our, our Austin tour.
• 27:13
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 27:14
  Speaker C: One of our guest speakers was the director of Tall, I mean, Texas Rural Communities.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 27:23
  Speaker A: That is very interesting that that's still going because, I mean, that's. We were in the Southwest collection reading back some stuff about Roseville back when they did that reading some newspaper articles and stuff hadn't been that long ago, but maybe a year ago, I guess, we were doing that. And I was like, we're reading about all the stuff that they did and, you know, and everything that came.
• 27:43
  Speaker C: So that was the predecessor to this. This fund that's there.
• 27:49
  Speaker A: That was really interesting.
• 27:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was. That's so fascinating. Yeah. And I've. I've asked around and I've gotten a couple of different names, so I haven't really kind of gotten a real 100% good lead on who to have on to talk about that, because I love it.
• 28:03
  Speaker C: There's some. You know, when you look around in our area, there's still families that are. Originated from that program.
• 28:12
  Speaker B: As a title person, I just did a little bit of snooping and looked up to see who was still around.
• 28:18
  Speaker C: It's a neat deal.
• 28:19
  Speaker B: It really was. It was a really neat deal. So for people that don't. Don't know about it, give us a little background.
• 28:25
  Speaker C: Well, you know, when the Depression was going on, the government was setting up different programs to help people in agriculture. And one of them was this program. And I don't know what it was called back then. I'd have to look it up. But back then it was to help settle farming areas. And so what they did was they would loan a family enough money to build a house and put in a windmill and buy a mule, a barn,
• 29:01
  Speaker B: a house, A mule.
• 29:02
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 29:03
  Speaker B: And so many acres.
• 29:04
  Speaker C: Was it a quarter things? A quarter section. And then they would go out there and work it and pay it back. So it was a neat deal.
• 29:15
  Speaker B: My understanding was that they all, like, they. They had a farm manager out there so that they collectively worked together because some of them had no experience in farming.
• 29:24
  Speaker C: Correct. And so they brought people in that were just down and out for no other better term, that they wanted to find a new place to call home and start a new beginning. And so that was one of the programs. And Ropesville was one of the communities that they started.
• 29:45
  Speaker B: And it is one of two. The top two successful programs of the communities. Some of them that I researched, some of them were like, people were. It was just fraud. Like, they were just straight up, like people took advantage of the people that came there. And I mean, they just didn't work out like these did here. But what I. I saw in the archives at the Southwest Collection, the original grant application. And it was the. The applicant was the Chamber of Commerce, the Levitt Chamber of Commerce.
• 30:21
  Speaker C: Oh, really?
• 30:22
  Speaker B: Isn't that interesting?
• 30:23
  Speaker C: I didn't know that part of it.
• 30:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. I was like that for. For Lubbock to recognize that, hey, this is. This is what our whole, you know, what we're built on. Because it wasn't. It was in Hockley County. Right. I mean, it wasn't even in Lubbock County. It was amazing for them to see. For them to actually have that kind of foresight.
• 30:45
  Speaker C: Well, the program was a good beginning for a lot of people out in this area now. And, you know, they've gone on. Those families have gone on to be successful in many ways.
• 30:59
  Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And I think part of that, like. And I don't know if this is right or this is kind of just something I've assumed because so many people left because of the Dust bowl and it seemed like it was like trying to get people to that had kind of been displaced by that too.
• 31:17
  Speaker C: Yeah. And also help, you know, conserve the land.
• 31:21
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 31:22
  Speaker C: You know, get the land back in the condition that it's not blowing like it was.
• 31:27
  Speaker B: So something I learned about the Dust Bowl a couple of weeks ago is that three years before it rained, they had already stopped like two thirds of the sand blowing because of implementation of other practices.
• 31:44
  Speaker C: Conservation practices. Yeah.
• 31:46
  Speaker B: And I. I did not know that. I just thought. I just assumed that it rained again and it stopped. I knew they. I knew they brought in practices. I don't think I had any clue how fundamental they were in actually changing this area.
• 32:02
  Speaker C: Well, as you drive around, especially as quail hunters.
• 32:06
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 32:06
  Speaker C: You find those spots where those. Those conservation practices were put in. Be it, you know, a windbreak or terraces. There's. There's all different kinds of things that, that we see. Bodark trees.
• 32:21
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness.
• 32:23
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 32:23
  Speaker C: You know, you still find those in.
• 32:26
  Speaker B: But elm trees were not. Someone said that the other day and I was like, zero. No, we did not put those in as when breaking.
• 32:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, that came in the. Was it 50s.
• 32:37
  Speaker C: Certain things. It was a soul conservation.
• 32:40
  Speaker A: But I mean, a lot of it was a beautification project.
• 32:42
  Speaker B: I didn't know that.
• 32:43
  Speaker C: I just thought they was just on the roadsides.
• 32:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. It was okay.
• 32:47
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, that makes sense.
• 32:48
  Speaker A: Projects and. Yeah, yeah. You know, they just those Siberian or Chinese elms and whichever, you know, you talk to one person, they'll say another Siberian elms. And somebody else says they're Chinese elms and they're the same tree. But anyway, you go in there and. And those things will just spread everywhere.
• 33:03
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 33:04
  Speaker A: I mean, one place.
• 33:06
  Speaker B: Well, they sure look bad this year.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: They've got Some kind.
• 33:08
  Speaker B: Is it, is it. There's, there's some kind of beetle. I was gonna say there's some kind
• 33:12
  Speaker A: of insect that's been a problem for. In them for probably the last oh 7, 8. But they're hardy as I'll get out. So it's hard, it's hard to kill them for the first 50 or so years of their life. After that they kind of hollow out.
• 33:24
  Speaker B: And so I've been looking around as we've had this drought at. As I drive through Lubbock because I'm a weirdo and look at how we have like you go to someplace and they have you know, trees planted that are starting to die and all this stupid grass. And I'm like my gosh, like how do you get people to go. A tree is a long term investment. You, you put your water there.
• 33:53
  Speaker A: I'd rather have a great. Have all the grass than the trees. As long as it's not from of grass. I mean.
• 33:58
  Speaker B: Well, that's why I'm a big fan of my goodness, let's put that kind of grass in. But I mean lawns is what I mean when I say grass. They have a lawn, you know or
• 34:08
  Speaker A: you know something you can get your, you can get your tail in the crack with the city pretty quick if you don't.
• 34:12
  Speaker B: There is a program you get in it, you do get an exemption for it that some people will take advantage I guess.
• 34:19
  Speaker A: But it's, I mean it's. Yeah. I mean those conservation programs that came in and you know you had that one that came in Dust bowl. Then of course in the 80s you had this conservation repair program which it's kind of interesting because I'm a, you know even back in the 80s I love, you know and that was back when I was, you know, otherwise known as crp. Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:38
  Speaker B: That's when people, when the government began to small payments.
• 34:42
  Speaker A: They call it the computer community replacement program because like in the I states that's what they, you know, they like. Well, they just put it all in the CRP and then the people left and then people left the communities. And I did not realize that you
• 34:56
  Speaker B: know I've heard somebody here say that, that they like look what it did to our communities.
• 35:01
  Speaker A: But I'm like we didn't have enough of it to matter. I mean when it boils down to it, what helped, what hurts the small community.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: But they were also realtor. The only person I've heard say this.
• 35:10
  Speaker A: The thing about what, what are small communities down here is improved road infrastructure. Better fuel economy and ease of travel. I mean, that's, you know, that's what smokes most of the little communities here, which is. Now you're staying at flip. As Lubbock is sprawling and growing out, you're seeing people moving. They're like, hey, you know what? And people, especially people that moved here from either more urban areas of the state or more urban or more urban states, you know, like you were talking about earlier, an hour is not an hour anymore. You know, an hour is not 10 miles. In me. It's like, hey, I can drive an hour and I can be right.
• 35:51
  Speaker B: I can be to work in 20 minutes instead of an hour and I can have my kids in a small school. Yeah, that's what I think. I like that y' all haven't consolidated
• 35:58
  Speaker A: yet when you're seeing ropes, what ropes is. I mean, I think ropes this year is no longer. Don't come into this Ropes. And if I'm. If I'm wrong, I apologize. But I believe they're not taking transfers out of district transfers anymore because their in district has grown so much now that they're maxing out classroom space.
• 36:18
  Speaker C: Well, there's a lot of, you know, new housing developments going on.
• 36:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, my goodness.
• 36:22
  Speaker A: And the tough thing for us, kind
• 36:23
  Speaker C: of like new home.
• 36:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. The tough thing for a school like Ropes is that's not a big town to have a bunch of tax base to draw from to build a new school, you know, and that's going to be a big challenge for them is how did we, you know, what do we do in this? Because they're not, you know, even 20,000 people, they're what, maybe 2000, 1500.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: Gosh.
• 36:45
  Speaker A: Thousand.
• 36:46
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 36:47
  Speaker A: Now, however. However big it is, it is. But, you know, that same deal as Lubbock grows and you as to HOKA does get more Toka could be facing
• 36:55
  Speaker C: the same deal or we're already looking at that. And, you know, with new home, you know, new home proper, 300 people. But outside of that is much more. And their school system, I think less numbers was north of 400. And so their sewer and water system was set up for 300. Now they've got 400 plus in that system and it's overwhelming their water and sewer system. And then you get into the discussion of, well, who pays for that? The people in the city are not willing to pay for those improvements in the millions of dollars tax wise that are going to require an upgrade in the water and sewer. And then the students are suffering because we've got water and sewer problems. Well, so there's discussion going on whether it's going to happen or not in my time frame, I don't know, but. But there's discussion going on whether to, you know, try to do some out of the box things that would fix that.
• 38:13
  Speaker A: I know Wilson got some revenue off of wind machines. Is TOCA getting any revenue off of that? Is that still growing down there?
• 38:20
  Speaker C: No, we don't have any wind development going on right now in Linn County. I've got some inquiries going on on solar right now. Most of the development projects that we're working on are solar right now. I think we've got probably three or four wind projects going, but we've got a ton of solar going on all over Texas and we're dealing with them. The farthest one I've got is down on the Texas coast at El Campo. We've got them all the way the top of the panhandle and in between. So, you know, solar is our biggest driver right now that we're seeing. But it's really changing in a hurry. You know, every contract we get in, in our office is changing daily.
• 39:15
  Speaker B: Really.
• 39:16
  Speaker C: It's amazing how fast things are changing in that.
• 39:20
  Speaker B: What kind of things are changing in the contracts?
• 39:23
  Speaker C: So, you know, when I first started doing it, we'd get a 30 page contract. In this last one I got 120.
• 39:32
  Speaker B: Oh my God.
• 39:33
  Speaker C: And so of course, the financing is changing a significant amount. But I think the practitioners are getting more savvy on what the issues are going to be and we're adding more and more to the agreements. You know, most of the landowners that are dealing with this have got other land. You know, they're not taking up all of the land in there.
• 40:01
  Speaker B: Right, exactly.
• 40:02
  Speaker C: And so how do you deal with them on that? And you know, the infrastructure that's required to come in, roads, transmission lines, communication lines, those kinds of things. How do you handle that? And amazingly enough, we've got some contracts that we're working on in our office right now that's kind of on the other side of the transaction. But we're representing some sheep farmers that are contracting to graze sheep under these. And it's amazing what, what we're doing and it's. Yeah, it's just a challenge and really enjoyable time to be practicing law.
• 40:42
  Speaker B: I had the Rhett Kirby and them on Kurtek because they have. They've been doing that for quite a while.
• 40:50
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 40:51
  Speaker B: And so I just found that so interesting. He's been helpful, you know, in you know, working with landowners when you're in a position like that to be able to, hey, what's the best way, what's the best clause to put in here for, you know, if you want to do sheep and you want to make sure that your soil is protected and that kind of stuff? I, you know, I think that we've had, I don't know if you've listened to any of the radio podcasts with Cassandra McQuillan from Texas Tech, but she is a. Probably so she's. She's a lawyer group in California and she was just graduated law school and her parents had, if I understand correctly, she negotiated basically the first lease for wind project. Her parents said, hey, we've had this. What is this? And she's like, I don't know, I'll find a lawyer. And there was not a lawyer. And so she just, she has spent her career representing landowners, either building projects or keeping projects out. And oh my goodness, she has had some experiences, you know, and so she actually should go back and listen to her because she does a deep dive into Fermi. It was really interesting. She did Freedom. She was one of I think three people that requested through Freedom of Information act all of the records. So it's very interesting. Yeah. For her to. Yeah. So I'd like actually another update. So we need to have her back on and get an update. But she's teaching a class there. And also of note, she was one of the most popular villains on Survivor.
• 42:24
  Speaker A: Oh, really?
• 42:25
  Speaker B: Chaos Cast.
• 42:29
  Speaker A: That means that there were two people associated with Texas Tech that have been at least two that have been on that show.
• 42:37
  Speaker B: What?
• 42:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, there was a guy back years back when I first started. It was on it too.
• 42:42
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 42:42
  Speaker A: So you're talking about how they, the leases have changed and things like that nature. When I, I talked to a guy. This is back in March, I interviewed for a different podcast. I interviewed a gentleman from a law firm in San Antonio that works exclusively with landowners. And we were talking about the remediation clauses basically in those things. And I was like, well, how long is a. You know, how long is. Are when these, these contracts? And he basically gave me the, the lawyer answer of how long is a piece of string? You know, it can be however long you want it to be on this thing. But when you look at at different. Like I know that in like Idaho where they've using the. They're using those and they're putting solar farms in that lay's is beginning to drop. And again, this is as well researched as I Can get it, but not knowing anybody up there. I don't have any firsthand information. It's all secondhand information. But lay's is looking at dropping potato contracts on fields that border solar farms because they're afraid of any particular, any runoff or any contamination that might come off of that.
• 43:49
  Speaker C: Really.
• 43:50
  Speaker A: And again, interesting. Do your own. I mean, it's worth what you paid for it, you know. But when you look at that remediation of, of an, of a solar farm, obviously we have not had any old ones go out that I'm aware of,
• 44:06
  Speaker C: but not had any solar. I've had, I've had one wind.
• 44:09
  Speaker A: How do they do the, how do they do the wind? If the wind goes out, do they leave the windmill up the. I mean, because that's a lot of cement down there.
• 44:17
  Speaker C: The problem that we ran into is we got the company that had it sold it to a Chinese company, Chinese company then went belly up and we got a judgment against them. But the judgment was a piece of paper that said you can go take it over, but what the heck do you do with it? A wind turbine sitting out in the field. And so ultimately the. Wind farm was sold and they've got somebody operating it now. Hopefully it's going to continue. But you know, anytime somebody comes into our office and talks about, you know, well, what does this mean? I try to explain to them, you've got a piece of land that is yours and you're fixing to sell a piece of it and you want to make sure that when you sell that piece that you still have certain controls and things that are going to benefit you at some point. And you know, you're weighing the difference of is that return that point row that's going to be in your field or you know, out in your pasture, you know, is it going to be worth what you're giving up? And you know, the numbers are getting to the point in agriculture. Yeah, it's, it's difficult not to accept it.
• 45:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's the thing about it is
• 45:52
  Speaker C: it's especially, especially with solar.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: Especially here.
• 45:55
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker A: You know, this part of, you know, our. When you look at the actual ag mean, you look at the, at the price of ag land in, in our region and you look at what you can generate off of it as ag land. And the two don't make any sense. They're two completely separate numbers. No, you know, I mean there's no, there's no right, no reason that a dry land farm in Terry or Linn county is going. Should be worth, you know, 17, $52,000 an acre. It just doesn't make any sense. You know, when you start running the numbers off of it, what you can generate off of it, you know that number is substantially lower.
• 46:31
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 46:32
  Speaker A: Than that. What you can get. They got a farm, but when the solar comes in, you know that that number is not terribly high that they have to, that they have to give. You give a landowner to be greater than what he can get on the ag side of things. But I always worry, I always worry about the cleanup and the remediation on these things. Well, it's like the one they put in in Kansas. Was it a year, year and a half ago that they worked on it for two years, got it up, got it open. It was open for a month and a hailstorm came through and just decimated the whole thing. And it was just solar panels, you know, parts strewn everywhere. It was like baseball or softball sized hell came through and wiped and smoked the whole thing.
• 47:10
  Speaker C: Well, that's one of the big things that we're doing in our contracts is making sure that we've got as good of remediation as we can. You know, the statute was changed several years ago and now they've got the removal bond in place for solar 20 years and wind 10. But you know, the removal bond is only as good as the person standing behind.
• 47:36
  Speaker B: That's what I want. Yeah. And because that's something I talked about with Cassandra was like, she's like, who goes and checks. Like is anybody checking to see that that's, that's there like, you know, and
• 47:47
  Speaker C: try to negotiate some of that in those contracts gets a lot of pushback.
• 47:51
  Speaker B: I bet it does. Yeah.
• 47:52
  Speaker C: You know, typically when, when we sign on to represent a landowner in those situations, we end up dealing with, you know, two to three, four attorneys. One may be representing the finance company out of Philadelphia. One may be representing the, the ultimate purchaser of the project out of Florida. Another one may be representing the, the developer out of, you know, California or Chicago somewhere. And it's, it takes a lot of time and a lot of different ideas are getting thrown into it.
• 48:29
  Speaker B: Well, and I mean, you know, we can complain about, you know, all we want about the mess that it leaves behind, but just go spend some time in south of Odessa.
• 48:43
  Speaker C: True.
• 48:44
  Speaker A: Well, at the same time though, I mean you're, you know, you say that, but why add a new mess without, without knowing what the previous messes are, you know, what you've already got down here, you know, why not go into this and hey, let's Learn. Oh, I think we absolutely fix this thing.
• 49:00
  Speaker B: But I think it's, it's not just wind and solar that doing this, right?
• 49:04
  Speaker A: Oh, God, no. But that's the only one that's, that's young enough and flexible enough that you can, you know, it might bend to the wind, you know.
• 49:12
  Speaker C: Well, one of the things that, that I tell clients when they come in is, you know, I'm dealing with my grandfather's leases, oil and gas leases that he did back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and I'm sure when he did them, they were really good leases, but today they're crap.
• 49:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:31
  Speaker C: And, and I hope that people aren't saying that about my wind or solar leases one of these days, but the reality of it is times change and the things that are normal and expected now are going to be not that way, 10, 15 years.
• 49:52
  Speaker B: Well, and that's part of why we have the orphan well mess that we have is because technology's changed and they did the best. Well, in some cases they did not. But I think in a lot of cases, they close those wells up.
• 50:07
  Speaker C: Sure.
• 50:07
  Speaker B: Out of the best they could at
• 50:08
  Speaker A: the time, at least.
• 50:10
  Speaker B: And now they can't write to the
• 50:12
  Speaker C: well, if you can, that's a whole
• 50:13
  Speaker A: different kind of worms.
• 50:15
  Speaker C: Well, if you can tell me what's going to be happening in 30 to 50 years, then.
• 50:19
  Speaker B: Right.
• 50:19
  Speaker C: You know, I don't need to be sitting in my seat in my office.
• 50:23
  Speaker A: If I could, if I could predict the future like that, I'd have already won the lottery and would be sitting somewhere, no joke.
• 50:28
  Speaker C: Well, you know, that's what we're doing. We're drafting contracts today that's going to be terminating 30 to 50 years from now. And your guess as good as mine.
• 50:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker B: Right.
• 50:39
  Speaker C: Because what we've seen in our lifetime, just in the last 10 or 20 years.
• 50:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:44
  Speaker C: You know, if, if you'd have told me what we're dealing with, with AI right now we'd been going on. I said you're lying.
• 50:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:52
  Speaker C: I'm telling you what it is. It's. It's creeping into everything we're doing with,
• 50:57
  Speaker A: you know, it's, you know, you'd look at the orphan well catastrophe that we have in Texas right now. And I just see, you know, you drive from here to Sweetwater and it's, you know, there's not many places you can go that you're not seeing a windmill somewhere on that road anymore. And I'm not going what happens. I was actually going to this since we had that conversation, I was actually driving down there thinking, what happens if these are orphans? Because an orwell, you know, theoretically you can move it. You know, somebody come in and, you know, there's a. There's what it costs to go down there. It's, you know, it's. It's 46. In some places. It's $46 a foot in some places. It's substantially less in other places.
• 51:38
  Speaker B: The last one that they just. That the state gave $10 million to. To fill a well, to plug a well. They're at 8 million right now on one single well. Right, One single well.
• 51:51
  Speaker A: But, I mean, but $10 million wouldn't touch a solar. A wind field. When you talk about There's. Was it 30 yards of cement?
• 52:02
  Speaker C: I don't know.
• 52:03
  Speaker A: There's a lot in a base of
• 52:04
  Speaker B: that base they spent 250,000 on. I mean, 2.2.5. Sorry, 2.5 million on concrete so far.
• 52:12
  Speaker A: On the.
• 52:12
  Speaker B: On this. On this.
• 52:13
  Speaker A: Well, I'm not. What I'm talking about is like the base of one of those wind turrets is something like. I want to say it's 30 minutes. That may. That may be a factor load right on it. I mean, there's a. It's a huge concrete foundation. Once you've got to. I mean, it's how many hundred and something foot tall. And so you got to have that to hold it in place. But I mean, you know, you got to weld a field of those that goes orphaned. And you don't just get one that goes orphan. You get the holes.
• 52:38
  Speaker B: I saw the funniest thing. We were. We toured a ranch in Oklahoma recently, and it was hot, hot. And this lady's got, I don't know how many. She's got wind turbines on her land. And you'd pass one and all these cows are lined up in the shade, side by side in the shade. It is hilarious because they're like the chorus line. It's like the Rockettes.
• 53:04
  Speaker C: We just got through doing one down at Ozona. And the big fight was how close could we get the wind turbine without disturbing the turkey roost. And so I hired a wildlife.
• 53:17
  Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Specialist.
• 53:19
  Speaker C: Expert to come in and he went and inspected it and gave me. And so we ended up, you know, drawing a circle around the turkey roost to exclude. So, you know, all of those things come into play. And that's what's expanding these contracts. These contracts are just getting big more and more, and we're learning more. Yeah, I mean, we're. We're becoming more and more educated.
• 53:43
  Speaker B: Well, we have something now to look at, to Dusty's point, that you didn't have when you were negotiate, when your granddad was negotiating these oil contracts. We have a mess and so we can look and see what that mess is.
• 53:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 53:58
  Speaker B: And you didn't have the, you didn't have that 40, I mean, 60 years ago or whenever they were contracting insanity
• 54:05
  Speaker A: is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I mean, hey, we've done the same thing. You know, we got something new moving in. Let's make sure we, let's make sure that the mistakes that we make in the new thing are new mistakes.
• 54:17
  Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, part of the problem is like you just don't, you don't trust the companies to do what they're going to say they're going to do whether you have a contract or not. And you don't trust the government to enforce that. And good example is, you know, the whole hubbub that happened two years ago when I can't remember what company it is that's supposed to have been grinding up those. Oh yeah, the wind blades. And they didn't do it. It's a big international company. I can't remember which one it is. And I'm bad press, bad press. But is anything happening? No. What they found out is the company that was supposed to be the one that was grinding those is just fake. It's not even a real company. Yeah, there's like nothing there.
• 54:56
  Speaker A: Well, it is like, you know, to your point, like the, the wind that you're talking about, it sold, you know, when the people you're contracting to sell it to Chinese company or. And I'm not picking on China, other than just. That's the example that we have is, you know, when something goes wrong and you know, the courts do what they say, here's your injunction. You can go get this stuff. Well, there's nothing there because it's all in China. And you know, you know, John Smith is not gonna be able to go to the Chinese, to Xi Jinping and in China and get anything out of the Chinese Communist Party that's just not.
• 55:26
  Speaker C: Well, you know, we got the judgment against, against them and then the turbine is there and our client couldn't afford to go take that turbine down, do something with it and clean it up. And so, you know, it turned into another problem. Thankfully this thing is picked up and they've got it, so maybe it'll continue.
• 55:53
  Speaker A: But that's. How would you, even as a Landowner, how would you even protect yourself against your contract being sold to some, to another company like that?
• 56:04
  Speaker C: So in, in the agreements that we're drafting, we're trying to, to either get them to let us approve it, which very, very rarely will they allow that. So the next best thing is that we are saying that if you assign it and you. Because it typically says they assign it and they have no further liability.
• 56:26
  Speaker A: Right. Yeah.
• 56:27
  Speaker C: We're changing that to saying, okay, if you assign it and you assign it to somebody that does not have the financial wherewithal to take care of the obligations in this contract, then we're coming back after you.
• 56:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, now see, that would fix the orphan will problem, right? Now if we'd had that.
• 56:44
  Speaker A: What is that called? Joint and several liability?
• 56:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, joint and several liability. But it's, it's just, it's a contractual obligation where that, that company that is selling it is absolving themselves that obligation. And we're trying to, to leave a spot where we can get back in there. Now, I'm not going to tell you that every one of them is agreeing to that. And I've got a lot of clients that are saying, you know, I need the $800 an acre.
• 57:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's. And that's the, that's it right there. That's the bad thing about it is that, you know, that kind of money to some, you know, when you, when you think about it over a large scale, that's, that's, that keeps you farming. Well, I mean, for a lot of the small of the, the few remaining smaller farmers or someone that is getting aging out and getting ready to retire,
• 57:36
  Speaker C: you know, that's worse. That's what we're seeing.
• 57:38
  Speaker A: It's a magic, that's the magic wand. Like, okay, I can do this and I can struggle and I can struggle and I can die on the farm, or I can get this $800 an acre and I can quit, slap it in the bank, and I can live my remaining days, you know, not having to worry about this.
• 57:54
  Speaker C: Well, where we're seeing it is, in fact, I'll use an example. We've got right now. We've got a client that's in, that's
• 58:01
  Speaker A: got
• 58:04
  Speaker C: offer on the table for north of 30 million. He's in his early 70s. His kids are all grown and gone. They're not living anywhere close. They have no ties to agriculture. And he says, that's more money than I made in my entire life and it will be generational income for the rest of my children's lives. And so there's no choice for him. He sees it as is a way to retire way out, but then also to leave his children something that he was not going to be able to.
• 58:41
  Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. And you know, Lord willing, the creek don't rise and everything works out great, maybe they get it and it moves on and you know, the land still in the family and they can do something else with it. You know, maybe his great grandkids want to come back and farm or run cattle on it or something like that, you know, and that's, you know, that's. I don't envy you at all because you know, as you said, you can't predict the future and you've almost, you've got to, you know, trying to cover your bases in an, in an industry that changes as rapidly as what is changing now in. I mean just the difference in solar panels now from five years ago is light years different. You know, that's what I think about data centers.
• 59:24
  Speaker B: We're investing so much money in these big, big, old, huge buildings and things. And I think surely, I mean, it just reminds me of how people used to have a computer the size of a house.
• 59:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 59:39
  Speaker B: You know, and I'm like, I just see it changing so fast.
• 59:42
  Speaker C: Our world is driven by money and everything turns on, on that one thing. And you can look back through history and you look at what's coming for our future and I promise you it's going to be driven by money. And when we're talking about cleanup, we're talking about, you know, all of these different things that are concerning us. Money's driving it and you've got to realize that that is the driving factor behind it and work as best you can with it.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's funny that people, you know, think, oh man, it's, you know, worse. It's always, everything's always been about money. You go back to however far back you want. It's about either money or if it predates money, it's about somebody has something that somebody else wanted.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker C: Well, and right now, you know, our clients are ag based.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker C: And then you talk to them about the opportunities that are coming knocking on their door through these different types of projects. Whether it be solar, wind, data, whatever. It's really a non issue. I mean, they don't have a choice. Farming's in the tank and if you're trying to make it farming right now, it is tough. And you have got to be looking at other alternatives to generate cash flow. And these are good opportunities.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker A: I Mean, it's, you know, we've preached. You can't preach diversification on one hand and then have something that's the most valuable form of versification. Diversification to come along in, you know, 50 years.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker C: Yeah, you're diversified.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker A: Or in generations in some of these areas.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, you're definitely diversified.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker A: Diversified.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker C: It's just not ag.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, I had, it's kind of funny. I had a, a friend of mine who is an attorney and he and a couple of his buddies owned a place up north. They were. This is back. Good night. This is when wind machines were just getting started. And they. He was approached by this. He said, I had two people. One of them was a guy that was a landman, had been a long time. Another one was this environmentalist girl out of California and they were trying to rent his place. And the guy, the guys, the environmentalist approach was, well, don't you want to do this for the environment? And he was like, yes. I tell you what, you give me the keys to your house once a month, I will come in, unlock your door, walk all the way through your house and then come back out and I may or may not close your door, but I'll do that for every, every week for 30 years, you know. And she's like, well, I didn't look at it that way. And then the other guy was like, what's it going to take doing? He's like, you're going to have to pay me enough money that I can buy another place to get away from you.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker C: I have a client right now that's selling a place because data centers going in across the road and of course the data center is not on him, but all of the infrastructure serving it is coming across him.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker C: And so he said, heck with it. I'm. I'm selling out and moving.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, that's where you wind up in on that. You know, it's not just in, it's not just the place where it sits. It's the stuff around it that it can affect too. I mean, you know, we don't know. You know, we didn't know 75 years ago how the oil industry was going to affect to something we talked about earlier, the Lesher Prairie Chicken. We didn't know and you know, everybody was just like, we're just gonna go do this, you know. Well, it comes to find out you get too many oil wells in a given area and that negatively impacts aggressive. You take out the leaks, you take out a bunch of different habitat formula continuous Habitat they need. But there's a number that they found now that says, okay, as long as you don't disturb more than this, it's okay. And they've got horizontal drilling now where they can go in, they can drill, you know, put a pad in one spot and they can go wherever they want to with it basically, you know, and so it's, it's, you know, technology has changed so much and we don't know how far it's going to change. And I mean, it could been tired. I mean, I just wonder having seen everything shrink in my lifetime go from, you know, the building size computers that they use in the Apollo missions and which I didn't see that, but anyway, but, and then you could shrink it all the way down to now I have what, a hundred times more computing power on that phone that they had to send a man to the moon, you know, and you're just like, it's just. And then what's solar panel gonna do? Yeah, you know, now you've got, you know, you can put 600 watts of solar panel on top of a 13 foot RV, you know, and run a microwave and air conditioner and everything you want out of that thing. How small is it going to get?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker C: Well, those changes are driving what we're doing in our office. I mean, just exactly what you hit on horizontal drilling has changed what we do in our office immensely. It's changing the practice of law and we are seeing that daily. These young attorneys were bringing into our office is going to be a challenge for them to stay competitive with all the things that are changing and stay relevant.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker B: Is it because it's AI, is that
• 1:05:02
  Speaker C: getting some of it? I don't, I don't think AI is going to put lawyers out of business. I think it's going to create more business.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker C: As you know. How many times did you hear that we're going to change the way we're doing things because of computers. Well, it's done nothing but increase what we're doing. It's going to save all this time, it's going to save all this paper. Well, good luck with that. But I think these challenges are going to change the way we practice.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker C: It's going to be more and more competitive in the, in the field of law and I think that we're going to have to change with it.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker A: One quick one thing. I want, I want to talk and I don't want to get in specifics. I don't want, you know, anybody to confuse anything that's said here. As legal advice because it's, this is not legal. Two shuckle heads and a lawyer. And so.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker C: But a country lawyer on top of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker A: that, we ought to have a radio show for that. Call it Two Chuck heads and a Lawyer. But anyway, but like when somebody does something like the, the, for example, let's just take a farm, retiring at 70 and somebody comes in and offers him $30 million to rent his place. When, when you're, when that, that gentleman is his planning his estate and he's looking at this and it doesn't have to be a lawyer, it can be anybody. When you're planning your estate and that stuff and you want like, you want to stay at, want to protect the environment, you want to keep it, well, let me do something better. If I had a place and I want it, and I'm a quail nut, everybody knows I'm a quail nut and I want to maintain that, that place and I want to maintain, I want it maintained for my great grandkids. One of the options that a guy has to look at as far as like locking that place in, saying, listen, I don't care what happens, you're not putting a breaking plow into this place and farming it. You know, you can do this, you can do that, you can do that. But is there.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker B: And you're not going to build on
• 1:07:10
  Speaker A: it and you're not going to build, you know, it's not going to be a subdivision, it's not going to be anything like that. What are the tools that a landowner would have to do that looking, you know, after his passing?
• 1:07:20
  Speaker C: So there's a whole litany of things, you know, first one that comes to mind is conservation easement. Then you can set up restrictions, deed restrictions, you can set up other things that would restrict the use. You can create trust, those kinds of things. The law looks with disfavor to tying something up forever. So there is usually typically some kind of time frame. But yes, you can do those kinds of things. Things. It's just a question of, you know, how, how creative do you want to be and then how much do you want to limit the people that are following you once you're gone on what they can and cannot do?
• 1:08:05
  Speaker A: Well, I'm a big enough horse's pet tooth. If it was me, my great, great grandkids would be cussing me.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker C: Well, we've got a lady that's wanting to leave her house to her pets and you know, it sounds good but you know, when we start asking questions, how are you going to take care of those pets, who's going to take care of them, what happens when they die, you know, who's going to be doing those things? And when you look at the reality of it and how long that can last, I think she's finally starting to understand that, you know, my limitations may not be realistic. And so I think when we talk with people on land use restrictions, I try to get them to look at what is realistic long term. And it may be good for you, your kids and your grandkids, but that may be the end of what you want to put those restrictions in place because restrictions will ultimately affect the value. And what you're ultimately wanting to do is to allow that value to continue on at some point and those individuals following along behind us to be able to achieve maximum return on that property.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker B: And I think that's it. Like, what is what, what is the value that you want them to have? Is it the economic value you want them to have or is it for you? It's the.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker A: I don't care about them, I'll be dead.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker B: Right, but it's not about the economic value for you.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker A: Right, right. So that's why I farm, because I'm in. Because I'm not interested in economic value, apparently.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker C: Just throw it down a hole.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, just. Yeah, I can shovel it. I can, I can shovel it in fast. Unfortunately, I'm in an industry that moves it out the back with a front end loader.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker C: Well, you know, there's always things that you can do. I try to get people to look at it realistically and what that means to them current and long term. You know, today it may fit my goals, but what happens generation after generation?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker A: What.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker C: What's that going to mean to them? And, you know, we're seeing a, we're seeing a change in agriculture in our area right now. You know, our cropping practices are changing, our crops are changing, our utilization is changing, our equipment is changing. And what I have seen in, in just my lifetime has been a huge change. And so when somebody's sitting across from me in the office and talking about these things, whether it be estate planning or, you know, buying or selling a piece of land, I try to get them to think through what these ramifications are and what changes are coming and where are they going to go and what they want to do with it. And it's a challenge.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker B: A big part of being a lawyer is thinking about what are the unintended consequences. Sure, it's a big part of it.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker A: And making people think.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You know, we Think so often with our emotions. And I think a lot of our job is to sit back and say, okay, I understand why you're mad, or I understand that this is what you want because of this, but let's think about this in a more logical, well thought out manner. And sometimes hard to get people to do that. And usually I tell the young attorneys in our office, I said, usually when that person's bled enough, spent enough money, they will start thinking in a more logical manner. And good, bad or otherwise, that's just human nature. And I've got clients that, that do things that I don't agree with. But you are hired to do a job, and you have to follow what they want, what their desire is. But that doesn't mean that you have to assist in that regard. You have to give them the choices and the ability to make an informed decision on their part and then try to accomplish what they need. And you don't want to lead them in the path which they want to go just because that's the direction they want to go.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's very true. And that's, you know, that's the trick of everything, is to try to guess as right as you can, you know, and you make an educated guess on it based upon experience, which, you know, fortunately, you have a lot of experience. You know, in my experience, being limited in that, in. In pretty much everything, it's always when you have a client come in, I would imagine that it's like, you know, this is the first time this client has ever seen this thing. You know, they may have never gotten a registered letter or had somebody serve them papers ever in their life. And so for them, it's a massive traumatic experience. And for you it's like, oh, it's Tuesday, you know, and so being able to be the voice of, hey, it's gonna be okay. We're gonna be here, you know, let's sit down, let's look at this, let's think about what we got to do here.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker B: It's like having somebody help you, like, take a, you know, 10,000 foot view of it and, like, you get to see the lay of the land a lot better. Somebody else sees that.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker A: My very, My limited experience with that, with, with attorneys, that's the best thing I got out of him was, you know, sitting there and paying him whatever he charged me an hour to just sit there and talk and walk through, walk.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker B: You know, it's cheaper to see a therapist for those things.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker A: Well, generally speaking, that's not. Not the number one issue I'VE got. Usually it's like, okay, if I do X, is he gonna. Is y gonna sue me? If that's, you know, how can I. Generally, what it is, is, okay, I know you told me not to start this business with this guy, but I did it anyway, and now I want the hell out of it.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker B: How do I get out of this?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker A: How do I get out of this?
• 1:14:31
  Speaker C: We always tell people it's cheaper to pay me now than pay me later.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker A: My experience is I'm dumb enough, I pay it twice.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker C: Well, you know, a lot of our job, especially in our office, is, you know, goes back to what some attorneys are called, counselors. You know, we counsel and we talk to them about pros and cons and best choices and worst choices and those kinds of things. And, you know, if I can go home at night feeling like I helped somebody better their position because of what we did in our office, then I can sleep. I don't want to go home and feel like I hurt somebody, I did something wrong, those kinds of things, because it bothers me. You don't get in the shower and wash it off. It stays with you. So you want to make sure that when at the end of the day that you're comfortable in what you're doing. And I'm not going to tell you that's been every day in my career because there's been times that I've done things that I've had to because of the situation.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker B: Well, but also, sometimes you. You don't learn something you don't want to do until you've done it. And then you go, never doing that again.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker C: Or when you get into it, you're like, too late to turn around and go, oh, crap.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker A: That's. Most of the stuff I've been in is you look at it like, oh, crap, why did I do that? Yeah.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker B: So are you. Have you seen many. Have you seen many easements?
• 1:16:13
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker B: Here. Here. You mean conservation conservation easements here?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker C: A few.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker B: I know. I mean, I asked about conservation easement here for somebody at the state level, and they were like, yeah, you're just not going to get one over there. But now at the national level, it looks like they're going to get an easement on that place. And so I thought that was interesting. I wondered how much money people are really willing to invest over on this side of the state.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker C: There's only one in Linn County. I've done one else one other place. And both of them were inherited tracts. And the people that inherited it wanted to do it. But when you talk about a conservation easement on a quarter or half a section, it doesn't really mean a whole lot in our world. It's great, got some good benefits. But when you look at it as the end of the day, it's not going to change the direction of the boat.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, it doesn't move the needle much like that. You know, you get 10,000 acres and it's a different story.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker B: Dusty's place is in a draw, and there's like. There's quite a bit through there that would be interesting if you could get easements on that, you know, lost draw, that length of that draw, you know.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker B: I mean, it's not ever going to be.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, I don't know.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker B: I would guess that at some point somebody would. It's like where there is a housing development and part of it, and it's. It's really pretty.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. But I mean, it's, you know. Well, but I mean, that's true, but there's no water. I mean, there's even less water there than when they put the housing development. And there's no water where they put the housing development. And so, I mean, it's.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker C: Well, that's another thing that you see that's changed in our lifetimes. You know, especially back in our part of the country when we were growing up, somebody saw a deer. That was huge, huge information that everybody was all excited about. Nowadays, it's just running the mill. And, you know, all of these things are changing. And it's changing what we're doing in our office. It's changing what we're doing in agriculture, for sure. You know, I've got farmers that would used to just say, come shoot my crane anytime you want to. Now, not anymore. You know, deer's the same way. And it's another income stream.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker B: That's right. That is right.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker C: For these landowners that. That we're having to look to.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker A: Well, they're massive. They're a massive nuisance. And grapes now tell you that.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker C: Oh, I'm telling you. Yeah.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker A: I remember. I remember the very first time as a kid that I saw a deer track. I was out hunting quail and I found a deer track, and I was shocked. And now I'm like, if I don't see one, it's a surprise.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker C: Yeah. You know, and so when we're talking to these. These developers on, you know, things that we're adding to these contracts. Yeah, that's one of them.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker C: How are we handling our hunting income? How are we handling wildlife? How Are we handling contractors coming on with dogs, bows, guns, those kinds of things? All of these things are changing and we're having to add to and used to where we said, you don't bring any guns or dogs or bows on. Now we're having to be more specific. I mean, because, you know, some guys slipped through and he didn't bring that type of gun on or something. So we're having to be very specific. And so all of these things that we're seeing through our office in regard to changes is just compounding. It's just getting exponentially bigger and bigger and it's driving these, these agreements to be bigger.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker A: How do they do hunting on. On a solar farm? I wouldn't think that that would be something that.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker C: So it's not hunting necessarily, but it's the loss of income for honey. Okay.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker A: So it's a lot. It basically is a line, another line item that.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker B: Have you seen, have you seen any. Where they're raising the panels for cattle? Have you done anything like that yet?
• 1:20:45
  Speaker C: One of the first ones that we did tried sheep on it, and the sheep got into the undercarriage of the panels and messed up the panels and so they stopped it. So now what we're seeing is they're raising those panels to significant enough height to keep the sheep out of wiring. And they're also putting in cabling that's armored cabling and so that they're not susceptible to that. And it's not only sheep that's getting into it. You know, we've had problems with rats, we've had problems with rabbits.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker A: Other things, the more native you put. More native you would make the grass underneath it. The more your rotor population is going to become, then you're going to wind up with opossums and I mean, porcupines. And I didn't think I'd. I'd never seen a porcupine in Terry county until I got a bird dog. And lo and behold, I found one the first year.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker B: Well, I know we have porcupines in, in Terry county because we have dogs that's. Met them a couple of times. Yeah, we saw a badge. You remember, we had it. We had a badger on our property growing up as we were kids.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker A: I've seen those before, too.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. I know. It's amazing. It's. It's funny because when we moved, we lived out almost to Gaines County. You know, the only thing you ever saw was a coyote. And then we moved to almost to Castro county, and the only thing you ever saw was A coyote and I have had in Lubbock a fox that lived right next door to me. And he and our neighbor's cat would play together. It was so funny. And then I have seen the. The largest raccoon I've ever seen in my lawn.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker A: I'm telling the numbers, the number of foxes. I think the average citizen of Lubbock would absolutely be floored by how many foxes, raccoons, and skunks are in this town.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker A: I mean, like, not. And I'm not saying on the edge of it. I mean, like, live in town at like. I go to the coffee shop down by Tech and about at least once a month. And if I'm down there early in the morning, there comes a great fox running across.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker A: And I mean, it's just the way it is.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker B: Well. And in rush, there's turkeys.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker B: So funny.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker A: There were turkeys in my neighborhood when I moved out there.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker B: I wonder. I haven't been out to the landmark lake landmark in years and years. And I wonder what the wildlife is out there.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker A: It's pretty remarkable. On the book, in case you don't know about. There's a new book, Stories. The Bones Tale.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker B: Yes. So we're trying to get her to come on.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker A: They just. She just released it. It. I got it on my Kindle on Tuesday and had it finished on Wednesday because I didn't finish it Tuesday because I didn't realize it until it was 11:30 at night. And I didn't want to stay up all night reading it. But Amazing book. But the amount of that they've gone in, it's about half. Roughly a half section, 336 acres or something like that. And they've gone into a big bunch of that and gone back and tried to rewild it. And they've done tons of research on what the prairie looked like out at that time. And going back in and trying to make sure they got it as close to accurate. I said it's not perfect, but it's close and it's getting closer, you know, and as years go by, it'll probably get even more closer. But thinking we're talking about Chinese elms, the first thing they had to do is go take out a bunch of Chinese elms, which you and I think about going. Taking out Chinese elms. We're just gonna go out there and chop it down, dig the trunk stump out all the way. They couldn't do that because if they went down there and they started digging, they might be disturbing an archaeological site.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker C: Oh my.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker A: And so, you know, like the walking trails they've got out there, it took them years to get it done because they had to do it where they could. They could not go in and disturb the subsoil.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker B: And then somebody came in and messed them up.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker B: When they vandalized them, they're just re.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker A: They're fixing them back, redoing it, but it's pretty amazing what they've got on that stuff. But you know, they like raccoons, deer, quail, turkeys, foxes, cows.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker B: Amazing. We stayed at a place in, in Denver that has a. It was, it was at one time a lake, but. And then it was like, by the. I don't know, it was a brownfield site. It was a mess. And so it's just this big old hole in the middle of, I mean, big old hole. And it feels like you're going down into a canyon, but you're. It's really man made, you know, and anyway, they've done, they've rewilded that whole thing. It's got like a, a place where it filters the, the water run off, the storm run off. And so there's a pond and there's beaver and. And they had prairie dogs and they had too many prairie dogs, so they brought in coyotes. I mean, so they try to keep it balanced. And it's just crazy because it's surrounded by, you know, housing development. You just walk across the road and go in there and then you go down and we turned on our Marlin app. If anybody doesn't have Marlin app, you should have marlin app on your phone. Merlin.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker A: Certain Merlin app for your birth university's bird app.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker B: Yes. It's so good. And you're just like, turn it on. And then it's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All these birds. You know, it's amazing. And it's in the middle of Denver.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker B: Crazy.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker A: And it, it's amazing how resilient nature can be if it's given a chance. You know, it really is remarkable how resilient it can, you know, but you've got to give it a chance, you know, and that's one of the things that you, you know, I love this. I love to see dirty fence rolls. I love to see. You know, I always tell people I farm dirty. It's the only thing I do dirty, apparently.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker C: Well, you know, that's, that's another change that we're seeing in agriculture. You know, my dad would roll over his grave if he saw the weeds in our field today. But you know, it's the type of agriculture it's changed and you know, used to if there was weed in the field, by golly, we stopped and took a hoe and walked out and got it and you know, came back and busted all day long.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker A: You know, you've got the herbicide choices you got now a lot of stuff that's, you know, you go through and like I drive past the dry land place that doesn't have, you know, there's not weed one in it because they go out and they hit it with roundup and then they hit it with glu phosphonate and they come back and hit it with dicamba and lo and behold it's that not got much anything there but you know, you're seeing the pendulum. In some areas you're seeing a pendulum swing back but some places, you know, it's. They are ripping out every fence row they can get to because they're having to try to get an economy of scale. And instead of, you know, a 30 row, you know, a 16 year old boom is not big enough anymore. It's gonna have to be, you know, bigger than that and they don't want to have to turn any more than they have to. And so they rip out a fence roll and then they're spraying from wall to wall. I had a guy was asking a friend of his, acquaintance of mine who's asking a friend of his, what would it take for you to not spray? You know, this, either side of this fence you farm them both, leave the fence and Flint, he's like, he said I couldn't do it. And he's like, why not? Well, my, the weed seed would get in my field and my landlord would see it, he would get mad at me and he'd rent it to the next guy, you know, because even though farming is getting as small as it is, there's always the next guy. We're not quite to the point yet where there's not the next guy.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker C: Well, and it, what you just said goes back to the changes that we've seen in agriculture. You know, talking about Roastville. Yes, Quarter Section used to support a family.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker B: Yes, it was a family Quarter Section,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker C: close to Quarter Section. Things that you were discussing, I don't remember which podcast it was, but you were talking about some financial struggles that
• 1:28:24
  Speaker B: you and daddy had gone through.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker C: My mom and dad did the same thing when I graduated from tech. Dad was in bankruptcy and I couldn't go back and farm. So I went to work for the National Cotton Council and Drove up and down the highway shaking hands with farmers for two and a half, three years and decided to go back to law school so I could get back home. And, you know, those changes that we're seeing from our parents to where we are today, you know, how many acres does it take to support a family? How many acres does it take to pay for that? 7450. Oh, my God.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker A: 97, 60 or whatever it is.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker C: I'm telling you.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker C: You know, quarter million dollars. Three. Three. Well, 300.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. The normal tractor around here is about 250. 300 probably.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker A: You go up north and they're pushing a million. You know, those big, big tractors up there that I thought was. Follow a guy that's farming in, in Kansas and he's like this tractor, this combine. He just got a combine. It was a demo last year. He got it this year and it's not green, so. And so that saves him about 350,000. But he said knew it was 600,000 for his combine. And you can only do so much with a combine.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker C: Well, it's changing the way we utilize our resources around here. And that is driving these other factors that we're talking about, you know, our solar, our wind, our data centers. All of those things are a result of, not, maybe not directly, but indirectly of the changes that we're seeing in the ag.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker A: We managed to go over time.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker B: Well, that is not a surprise.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker A: But that's okay because there's not. There's nothing important after us. We're the most important people on the radio.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker A: But I had one question, one last question I'm going to ask you, and I have completely forgotten it.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker B: Oh, well, I guess you'll have to come back.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker A: You have to come back.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker B: Well, so when you, when you sit down, said, so we decided what we're gonna talk about.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker A: I was like, I remember what it was.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker C: Yeah. So when I asked Hillary, I said, well, okay, well, what discussion topics. And, and I knew that, that you'd mentioned once upon a time that you wanted to do the ropesville deal. And I'll do that, but I need to go back to.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker B: You have to brush it.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker C: Study my, my notes on that. But, you know, it's always a pleasure to be with y' all and, and it's interesting. And I listen to you constantly. It's fun.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker B: I'm so glad our audience has really grown. It really has.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker A: I did remember when I wanted to ask you.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker B: I'm sorry, kids.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker A: What I wanted to ask you was looking at agriculture now, do you see this region ever shifting more to an even. A more even balance or even heavier to the livestock side of it versus the row crop side.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker C: I think it's already started. We're seeing a significant increase in what I call fence rows. Farmers that are taking row crop farms and fencing them. And they're fencing them because.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker A: And they're not fencing them with electric fence.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker C: No, they're fencing them with high $5 wire, barbed wire fence that. They're looking at alternative uses of that. That property. I've done some myself. You know, we're moving more. More to cattle, and my nephews just started cheap and we're. We're looking at alternative uses.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker B: Satellite fencing.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker C: No, I've been studying it. I just don't think it's cost effective for us. Right yet.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker A: Well, if you ever do and you want to run, run a couple. Head on a place. I need to have some grazing done in my small place.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker C: Well, you know, that is very close to home with bird dogs. If you. If you're running a Garmin, that's fine. You know, it's. It's kind of the same concept, but there's some amazing things going on with. With.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker B: It's amazing. It's amazing. It is.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker A: Well, I look forward to the next time we get.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker C: You bet.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker B: This is great.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker C: My pleasure. Thanks.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker B: Thanks. Who do we have next week?
• 1:32:49
  Speaker A: Let me. Let me look. I've got a. Thank goodness for technology because I don't ever write anything down anymore. And I've got to figure out how to get to.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker B: I'm sorry.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker A: We have Lauren Garduno.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Port to Plains.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker A: Port to Plane.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker B: Oh, he said he runs the Fort to Plains. That's right.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker C: I need to listen to that because. Yeah, 87's going through Linn county. And everybody's been saying since I was a little. Interstate's coming. Interstate's coming.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker B: Well, we're gonna find out. We'll find out next week at noon.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker A: Next weekend then. Well, thank you, everybody. Thanks, everybody listening to us on Thank y'.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker C: All.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker A: The dry side dispatch brought to you by HSI Water.